In the world of celebrity authors, speakers, and pastors, we have pledged our allegiance to people we do not even know. Much of the time we seem willing to follow them without hesitation. This leadership comes with incredible responsibility. When a leader makes a statement regarding abuse allegations or stands by someone against whom others have leveled accusations, people will watch and do likewise. It is easy and comforting to say, “Well he/she seems to know more about it and continues to promote this person, so I’m sure the accusations are wrong.” And no doubt, this can be true. But what if we’re wrong when we think these leaders know significantly more than we do about the situation? 

I’ve been trying to write this post for quite some time, and it hasn’t been an easy one. It’s a sensitive topic, and I want it to read the way I mean it–with concern for the flourishing of all people, particularly the least of these in our midst. I pray that comes across in these words:

A few months ago, I was with my sister-in-law in a country in the Middle East when a man briefly violated my personal space and my body. The details are not important for this post, but the first time it happened I was caught off guard, unsure whether or not I was imagining it. When he did it again, I was no longer unsure, but I still didn’t know what to do. Knowing I was in the midst of a culture in which the treatment of women was notoriously poor, I didn’t know what rights I had, or whether or not to draw attention to what happened. So I simply walked away, ashamed and embarrassed that I hadn’t stood up for myself.

This experience opened my eyes to see just a tiny glimpse of what it might be to suffer sexual abuse within the church. Obviously my experience was not within the church, but I saw things in a new light. I felt powerless because I was on someone else’s turf. I didn’t think what this man did was normal, but I also didn’t know how to stop it in the moment, or if I might get in more trouble for drawing attention to it. I was ashamed. I didn’t want to talk about it to anyone. In fact, I only told my husband a couple of months after the fact because I didn’t want to burden him with the knowledge of what happened.

In recent months, I have thought frequently about abuse allegations in the church. I have read story after story about abuse victims who went to church leaders and either were not believed or were blamed in part for what happened. I thought about how hard it must have been to get up the courage to tell their stories—I couldn’t even tell my own husband—and how rare it must be for someone to make up a story like this and willfully go through the torture of talking about it. Experts in this field suggest abuse happens far more often than we know and the allegations that come out represent only a small percentage of the instances that it occurs.

Then I saw the film “Spotlight,” which is based on the true story of a team of investigative journalists at The Boston Globe who worked tirelessly to break a major story of child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church and the cover-up of said abuse (you can listen as my husband and I discuss the film here).

This was not an easy film to watch. I found myself, as a mother of children who are the ages of some of the children who were abused, getting angry repeatedly. I was angry at the priests who performed these horrible acts, angry at their superiors who covered up the abuse, and angry at anyone who knew about it and refused to speak up.

There’s a key quote in the film, delivered by Stanley Tucci, who portrays a lawyer defending several victims of one priest. Tucci’s character talks about who is responsible for the abuse, stating, “If it takes a village to raise a child, it also takes a village to abuse one.”

It’s a powerful line, and the movie goes on to back it up. From Catholic priests, bishops, and cardinals to reporters, lawyers, and parishoners, we see person after person who has failed these children, both before and after their abuse. While watching the film, I was compelled to consider where I fit in the village. Not in the village of the Catholic Church of Boston, but in my own village–the village of American Protestant evangelicalism.

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